The invention relates to a base station equipment for receiving and transmitting a signal of a desired user, which signal to be received may arrive at the equipment along several different paths with several different delays, and which equipment comprises one or more antenna arrays consisting of several elements, one or more channel units, which channel unit comprises means for phasing the signal to be transmitted and received by the antenna array in such a way that the gain from the antenna array is the greatest in the desired direction, and means for distinguishing the symbols comprising connection quality information from the signal received from the mobile station.
The present invention is applicable for use in a data transmission system applying any multiple access method, but especially in a cellular system utilizing code division multiple access. Code division multiple access (CDMA) is a multiple access method, which is based on the spread spectrum technique and which has been applied recently in cellular radio systems, in addition to the prior FDMA and TDMA methods. CDMA has several advantages over the prior methods, for example spectral efficiency and the simplicity of frequency planning. An example of a known CDMA system is the broadband cellular radio standard EIA/TIA IS-95.
In the CDMA method, the narrow-band data signal of the user is multiplied to a relatively wide band by a spreading code having a considerably broader band than the data signal. In known test systems, bandwidths such as 1.25 MHz, 10 MHz and 25 MHz have been used. In connection with multiplying, the data signal spreads to the entire band to be used. All users transmit by using the same frequency band simultaneously. A separate spreading code is used over each connection between a base station and a mobile station, and the signals of the different users can be distinguished from one another in the receivers on the basis of the spreading code of each user.
Matched filters provided in the receivers are synchronized with a desired signal, which they recognize on the basis of a spreading code. The data signal is restored in the receiver to the original band by multiplying it again by the same spreading code that was used during the transmission. Signals multiplied by some other spreading code do not correlate in an ideal case and are not restored to the narrow band. They appear thus as noise with respect to the desired signal. The spreading codes of the system are preferably selected in such a way that they are mutually orthogonal, i.e. they do not correlate with each other.
In a typical mobile phone environment, the signals between a base station and a mobile station propagate along several paths between the transmitter and the receiver. This multipath propagation is mainly due to the reflections of the signal from the surrounding surfaces. Signals which have propagated along different paths arrive at the receiver at different times due to their different transmission delays. In the CDMA, the multipath propagation can be exploited in the reception of the signal in the same way as diversity. The receiver generally utilized in a CDMA system is a multibranch receiver structure where each branch is synchronized with a signal component which has propagated along an individual path. Each branch is an independent receiver element, the function of which is to compose and demodulate one received signal component. In a conventional CDMA receiver, the signals of the different receiver elements are combined advantageously, either coherently or incoherently, whereby a signal of good quality is achieved.
CDMA systems can also apply a soft handover wherein a mobile station may simultaneously communicate with several base stations by utilizing macrodiversity. The connection quality of the mobile station thus remains high during the handover and the user does not notice a break in the connection.
Interference caused by other connections in the desired connection thus appears in the receiver as noise that is evenly distributed. This is also true when a signal is examined in an angular domain according to the incoming directions of the signals detected in the receivers. The interference caused by the other connections in the desired connection thus also appears in the receiver as distributed in the angular domain, i.e. the interference is rather evenly distributed into the different incoming directions.
The capacity of the CDMA, which can be measured by means of spectral efficiency, has been further improved with sectorization. A cell is then divided into sectors of a desired size that are serviced by directional antennas. The mutual noise level caused by the mobile stations can thus be reduced significantly in the base station receiver. This is based on the fact that on average the interference is evenly distributed between the different incoming directions, the number of which can thus be reduced by means of sectorization. The sectorization can naturally be implemented in both transmission directions. The advantage provided in the capacity by the sectorization is-proportional to the number of the sectors.
A sectorized cell may also utilize a special form of soft handover, softer handover, wherein a mobile station performs a handover from one sector to another by communicating simultaneously with both sectors. Even though soft handover improves the connection quality and sectorization increases the system capacity, the movement of the mobile stations naturally leads to the stations performing several handovers from one sector to another. This loads the processing capacity of the base station controller. Several soft handovers also produce a situation where several mobile stations communicate simultaneously with more than one (usually two) sector, whereby the increased capacity provided by the sectorization is lost as a signal of a mobile station is audible in a wide sector.
The multiple access interference of the CDMA systems has also been reduced by means of different known multiple access interference cancellation (IC) methods and multi-user detection (MUD). These methods are best suited for reducing the interference produced within the user""s own cell, and the system capacity can thus be increased to about a double compared to a system implemented without interference cancellation. However, these methods do not significantly improve the size of the coverage area of the base station compared to known technology. Also, the IC/MUD techniques are complicated to realize, wherefore they have mainly been developed in the uplink direction.
Another method that has been developed is an SDMA (Space Division Multiple Access) method wherein the users are distinguished from one another on the basis of their location. This is performed in such a way that the beams of the receiver antennas at the base station are adjusted to the desired directions according to the location of the mobile stations. For this purpose, the system uses adaptive antenna arrays, i.e. phased antennas, and the processing of the received signal, by means of which the mobile stations are tracked.
The use of the SDMA in connection with the CDMA provides several advantages over the prior methods, such as sectorization. If the sector beams in the sectorization are narrowed in order to increase the spectral efficiency, the number of the handovers to be performed from one sector to another also increases. This in turn increases too much the calculation capacity required in the base station controller.
In connection with the application of the SDMA, the background art is illustrated in A. F. Naguib, A. Paulraj: Performance of CDMA Cellular Networks With Base-Station Antenna Arrays (Proc. International Zxc3xcrich Seminar on Digital Communications, pp. 87-100, Zxc3xcrich, Switzerland, March 1994), which is incorporated herein by reference. In the SDMA a signal is thus received by means of an antenna array, and the received signal is shaped by means of digital signal processing in such a way that the directivity patterns of the antennas are suitable for the stages following the shaping in the receiver. In prior art arrangements, the received signal is shaped in order to maximize the signal-to-interference ratio of the desired signal. The received signal is thus shaped in such a way that the directivity pattern of the antenna array minimizes the interference caused by the other connections in the desired signal. In the arrangement according to the aforementioned reference, each detected signal component is subjected to individual beam shaping, i.e. the impulse response must be known before the shaping.
Experimental Studies of Space-Division-Multiple-Access Schemes for Spectral Efficient Wireless Communications by G. Xu, H. Liu, W. J. Vogel, H. P. Lin, S. S. Jeng and G. W. Torrence (IEEE Int. Conf. On Comm. ICC 1994, New Orleans, USA, IEEE 1994), which is incorporated wherein by reference, discloses a method which applies the SDMA and in which the directivity pattern of the transmitter antennas is shaped. However, the method disclosed is suitable for use only in systems where both transmission directions are on the same frequency.
The purpose of the present invention is to realize a base station equipment and a method for steering transmission antennas, by means of which the spectral efficiency can be improved further compared to the prior CDMA systems, so that the technical implementation of the equipment will still be advantageous and wherein a connection of good quality can be maintained between a base station and a mobile station even in difficult propagation conditions of radiowaves. The purpose of the invention is to apply the SDMA efficiently in a CDMA environment by utilizing new type of multidimensional search and the connection quality information transmitted by a mobile station. The application of the invention does not require both of the transmission directions to be on the same frequency.
This is achieved with a base station equipment of the type described in the preamble, characterized in that the channel unit comprises means for searching for the incoming directions and delays of the received signal components, and means for controlling the phasing means of the opposite transmission direction on the basis of said information and the connection quality data received from the mobile station.
The invention also relates to a method for steering an antenna beam in a base station equipment, in which method a signal is received and transmitted by means of an antenna array consisting of several elements by phasing the signal to be received and transmitted in such a way that the gain from the antenna array is the greatest in the desired directions, and wherein a mobile station transmits to the base station information about the quality of the signal it has received from the base station. The method according to the invention is characterized in that in the base station equipment, the incoming directions and delays of the signal components received from the mobile station are searched for, and that the phasing of the signal to be transmitted in the opposite transmission direction is controlled on the basis of said measurement and the connection quality information received from the mobile station.
The method according to the invention provides considerably better spectral efficiency when compared to the conventional cellular systems, including systems applying the CDMA method. The method increases both the number of the channels used by a factor of 10 to 100, and the size of the coverage area of the base station by a factor of 5 to 10. This is based on that fact that the interference to the other users decreases significantly in the downlink transmission direction, when the signal is steered during the transmission in the directions from which the signal components from the mobile station were received advantageously at the base station. On the basis of the connection quality information transmitted by the mobile station, it is possible to rapidly react to changing propagation conditions and to alter the beams and powers of the transmission antennas.
According to the first preferred embodiment of the invention, the signal processing can be performed digitally on the base band, whereupon the antenna beams can be steered directly to the desired directions by means of the phasing of the received signal. In the second preferred embodiment of the invention, the signal phasing is performed analogically, thus resulting in a number of fixed antenna beams from which the beams receiving the best components of the desired signal are selected for the reception.